''Emile, or On Education'' () is a
treatise
A treatise is a Formality, formal and systematic written discourse on some subject concerned with investigating or exposing the main principles of the subject and its conclusions."mwod:treatise, Treatise." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Acc ...
on the nature of
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
and on the nature of
man
A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy.
Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...
written by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...
, who considered it to be the "best and most important" of all his writings. Due to a section of the book entitled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar", ''Emile'' was banned in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
and
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
and was publicly burned in 1762, the year of its first publication. It was forbidden by the
Church being listed on the ''
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The (English: ''Index of Forbidden Books'') was a changing list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former dicastery of the Roman Curia); Catholics were forbidden to print or re ...
''. During the
French Revolution, ''Emile'' served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education. After the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
,
Noah Webster used content from ''Emile'' in his best-selling schoolbooks and he also used it to argue for the civic necessity of broad-based female education.
Politics and philosophy
The work tackles fundamental
political
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
and
philosophical questions about the relationship between the
individual and
society
A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...
: how, in particular, the individual might retain what Rousseau saw as
innate human goodness but remain part of a corrupting collectivity. It has a famous opening sentence: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man".
Rousseau seeks to describe a system of education that would enable the ''natural man'' he identifies in ''
The Social Contract
''The Social Contract'', originally published as ''On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right'' (), is a 1762 French-language book by the Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about how ...
'' (1762) to survive corrupt society.
He employs the
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
ic device of Emile and his
tutor to illustrate how such an ideal
citizen
Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state.
Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationality ...
might be educated. ''Emile'' is scarcely a detailed
parenting
Parenting or child rearing promotes and supports the physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and educational development from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the intricacies of raising a child and not exclusively for a biologica ...
guide but contains some specific advice on raising
children
A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...
. It is regarded by some as the first
philosophy of education
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It also examines the concepts and presuppositions of education theories. It is an interdisciplinary fiel ...
in
Western culture
Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the Cultural heritage, internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompas ...
to have a serious claim to completeness and as one of the first ''
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, a bildungsroman () is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth and change of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age). The term comes from the German words ('formation' or 'edu ...
'' novels.
Book divisions
The text is divided into five ''books'': the first three are dedicated to the child Emile, the fourth to an exploration of the
adolescent
Adolescence () is a transitional stage of human physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated w ...
, and the fifth to outlining the education of his female counterpart Sophie, as well as to Emile's domestic and civic life.
Book I
In Book I, Rousseau discusses not only his fundamental philosophy but also begins to outline how one would have to raise a child to conform with that philosophy. He begins with the early physical and emotional development of the infant and the child.
''Emile'' attempts to "find a way of resolving the contradictions between the natural man who is 'all for himself' and the implications of life in society". The famous opening line does not bode well for the educational project—"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man". But Rousseau acknowledges that every society "must choose between making a man or a citizen" and that the best "social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity". To "denature man" for Rousseau is to suppress some of the "natural" instincts that he extols in ''
The Social Contract
''The Social Contract'', originally published as ''On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right'' (), is a 1762 French-language book by the Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about how ...
'', published the same year as ''Emile'', but while it might seem that for Rousseau such a process would be entirely negative, this is not so. ''Emile'' does not lament the loss of the
noble savage. Instead, it is an effort to explain how natural man can live within society.
Many of Rousseau's suggestions in this book are restatements of the ideas of other educational reformers. For example, he endorses
Locke's program of "harden
ng children'sbodies against the intemperance of season, climates, elements; against hunger, thirst, fatigue". He also emphasizes the perils of
swaddling and the benefits of mothers nursing their own infants. Rousseau's enthusiasm for
breastfeeding
Breastfeeding, also known as nursing, is the process where breast milk is fed to a child. Infants may suck the milk directly from the breast, or milk may be extracted with a Breast pump, pump and then fed to the infant. The World Health Orga ...
led him to argue: "
t let mothers deign to nurse their children, morals will reform themselves, nature's sentiments will be awakened in every heart, the state will be repeopled"—a hyperbole that demonstrates Rousseau's commitment to grandiose rhetoric. As Peter Jimack, the noted Rousseau scholar, argues: "Rousseau consciously sought to find the striking, lapidary phrase which would compel the attention of his readers and move their hearts, even when it meant, as it often did, an exaggeration of his thought". And, in fact, Rousseau's pronouncements, although not original, affected a revolution in swaddling and breastfeeding.
Book II
The second book concerns the initial interactions of the child with the world. Rousseau believed that at this phase the education of children should be derived less from books and more from the child's interactions with the world, with an emphasis on developing the senses, and the ability to draw
inference
Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...
s from them. Rousseau concludes the chapter with an example of a boy who has been successfully educated through this phase. The father takes the boy out flying kites, and asks the child to infer the position of the kite by looking only at the shadow. This is a task that the child has never specifically been taught, but through inference and understanding of the physical world, the child is able to succeed in his task. In some ways, this approach is the precursor of the
Montessori method.
Book III
The third book concerns the selection of a
trade
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
Traders generally negotiate through a medium of cr ...
. Rousseau believed it necessary that the child must be taught a manual skill appropriate to his sex and age, and suitable to his inclinations, by worthy role models.
Book IV
Once Emile is physically strong and learns to carefully observe the world around him, he is ready for the last part of his education—sentiment: "We have made an active and thinking being. It remains for us, in order to complete the man, only to make a loving and feeling being—that is to say, to perfect reason by sentiment". Emile is a teenager at this point and it is only now that Rousseau believes he is capable of understanding complex human emotions, particularly sympathy. Rousseau argues that, while a child cannot put himself in the place of others, once he reaches adolescence and becomes able to do so, Emile can finally be brought into the world and socialized.
In addition to introducing a newly passionate Emile to society during his adolescent years, the tutor also introduces him to religion. According to Rousseau, children cannot understand abstract concepts such as the soul before the age of about fifteen or sixteen, so to introduce religion to them is dangerous. He writes: "It is a lesser evil to be unaware of the divinity than to offend it". Moreover, because children are incapable of understanding the difficult concepts that are part of religion, he points out that children will only recite what is told to them—they are unable to believe.
Book IV also contains the famous "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar", the section that was largely responsible for the condemnation of ''Emile'' and the one most frequently excerpted and published independently of its parent tome. Rousseau writes at the end of the "Profession": "I have transcribed this writing not as a rule for the sentiments that one ought to follow in religious matters, but as an example of the way one can reason with one's pupil in order not to diverge from the method I have tried to establish". Rousseau, through the priest, leads his readers through an argument which concludes only to belief in "
natural religion": "If he must have another religion", Rousseau writes (that is, beyond a basic "natural religion"), "I no longer have the right to be his guide in that".
Book V
In Book V, Rousseau turns to the education of Sophie, Emile's wife-to-be.
Rousseau begins his description of Sophie, the ideal woman, by describing the inherent differences between men and women in a famous passage:
In what they have in common, they are equal. Where they differ, they are not comparable. A perfect woman and a perfect man ought not to resemble each other in mind any more than in looks, and perfection is not susceptible of more or less. In the union of the sexes each contributes equally to the common aim, but not in the same way. From this diversity arises the first assignable difference in the moral relations of the two sexes.
For Rousseau, "everything man and woman have in common belongs to the species, and ... everything which distinguishes them belongs to the sex".
[Rousseau, 358.] Rousseau states that women should be "passive and weak", "put up little resistance" and are "made specially to please man"; he adds, however, that "man ought to please her in turn", and he explains the dominance of man as a function of "the sole fact of his strength", that is, as a strictly "natural" law, prior to the introduction of "the law of love".
Rousseau's stance on female education, much like the other ideas explored in ''Emile'', "crystallize existing feelings" of the time. During the eighteenth century, women's education was traditionally focused on domestic skills—including sewing, housekeeping, and cooking—as they were encouraged to stay within their suitable spheres, which Rousseau advocates.
Rousseau's brief description of female education sparked an immense contemporary response, perhaps even more so than ''Emile'' itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, dedicated a substantial portion of her chapter "Animadversions on Some of the Writers who have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt" in ''
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'' (1792) to attacking Rousseau and his arguments.
When responding to Rousseau's argument in ''A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'', Wollstonecraft directly quotes ''Emile'' in Chapter IV of her piece:
"Educate women like men," says Rousseau n ''Emile'' "and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us." This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.
French writer
Louise d'Épinay's ''Conversations d'Emilie'' made her disagreement with Rousseau's take on female education clear as well. She believes that females' education affects their role in society, not natural differences as Rousseau argues.
Rousseau also touches on the political upbringing of Emile in book V by including a concise version of his ''
Social Contract
In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is an idea, theory, or model that usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Conceptualized in the Age of Enlightenment, it ...
'' in the book. His political treatise ''The Social Contract'' was published in the same year as ''Emile'' and was likewise soon banned by the government for its controversial theories on
general will. The version of this work in ''Emile'', however, does not go into detail concerning the tension between the Sovereign and the Executive, but instead refer the reader to the original work.
''Émile et Sophie''
In the incomplete sequel to ''Emile'', ''Émile et Sophie'' (English: ''Emilius and Sophia''), published after Rousseau's death, Sophie is unfaithful (in what, it is hinted, might be a drugged rape), and Emile, initially furious with her betrayal, remarks "the adulteries of the women of the world are not more than gallantries; but Sophia an adulteress is the most odious of all monsters; the distance between what she was, and what she is, is immense. No! there is no disgrace, no crime equal to hers". He later relents somewhat, blaming himself for taking her to a city full of temptation, but he still abandons her and their children. Throughout the agonized internal monologue, represented through letters to his old tutor, he repeatedly comments on all of the affective ties that he has formed in his domestic life—"the chains
is heartforged for itself". As he begins to recover from the shock, the reader is led to believe that these "chains" are not worth the price of possible pain—"By renouncing my attachments to a single spot, I extended them to the whole earth, and, while I ceased to be a citizen, became truly a man". While in ''La Nouvelle Héloïse'' the ideal is domestic, rural happiness (if not bliss), in ''Emile'' and its sequel the ideal is "emotional self-sufficiency which was the natural state of primitive, pre-social man, but which for modern man can be attained only by the suppression of his natural inclinations". According to Dr. Wilson Paiva, member of the Rousseau Association, "
ft unfinished, ''Émile et Sophie'' reminds us of Rousseau's incomparable talent for producing a brilliant conjugation of literature and philosophy, as well as a productive approach of sentiment and reason through education".
Reviews
Rousseau's contemporary and philosophical rival
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
was critical of ''Emile'' as a whole, but admired the section in the book which had led to it being banned (the section titled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar"). According to Voltaire, ''Emile'' is
However, Voltaire went on to endorse the ''Profession of Faith'' section and called it "fifty good pages... it is regrettable that they should have been written by... such a knave".
The German scholar
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
wrote in 1787 that "Emile and its sentiments had a universal influence on the cultivated mind".
See also
* ''
Original Stories from Real Life'', a response text written by
Mary Wollstonecraft
* ''
Robinson Crusoe''
Notes
References
33. Paiva, Wilson A. Discussing human connectivity in Rousseau as a pedagogical issue. Educ. Pesqui., São Paulo, v. 45, e191470, 2019. Link: http://educa.fcc.org.br/pdf/ep/v45/en_1517-9702-ep-45-e191470.pdf
Bibliography
* Bloch, Jean. ''Rousseauism and Education in Eighteenth-century France''. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995.
* Boyd, William. ''The Educational Theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau''. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963.
* Jimack, Peter. ''Rousseau: Émile''. London: Grant and Cutler, Ltd., 1983.
*
*
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ''Emile, or On Education''. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1979.
* Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ''Emilius and Sophia; or, The Solitaries''. London: Printed by H. Baldwin, 1783.
* Trouille, Mary Seidman. ''Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment: Women Writers Read Rousseau''. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997.
External links
The ''Emile'' of Jean-Jacques Rousseauat Columbia.edu – complete French text and English translation by Grace G. Roosevelt (an adaptation and revision of the Foxley translation)
* in an English translation by Barbara Foxley
*
Rousseau's Émile; or, Treatise on education' (abridged English translation by William Harold Wayne; 1892) at
Archive.org
*
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1762 novels
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